Big waves hit the North Shore

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After Karel and I returned from the trail, we chilled out for another day in Kauai, then island hopped to Oahu. The main reason for traveling to Hawaii was to attend the wedding of our friend, Brent, and his lovely fiancé, Amy. When we arrived in Honolulu, we met up with our buddy, Bubba, and settled into our condo.

After a couple of days of playing in the ocean, we had heard that the North Shore was to receive unusually large waves and the professional surfers would be tearing it up. Apparently, waves this large hadn’t been seen on the Hawaiian coastline in nearly 10 years. With my expectations pumped up, I woke at 4 o’clock in the morning to arrive at the North Shore around 6:00 AM or so. Unfortunately, I think my expectations were built too high. When I arrived at the beaches, I kept wondering, ‘What is everybody looking at?’ There were no surfers and just big waves crashing down. Not being a local, I’m sure I didn’t appreciate this unique event. The only surfers I saw were far, far away in the distance. Even with a telephoto lens, they were not dramatic. All the surfers were lined up in a row and waited for 10-15 minutes for a particular wave to emerge.

Although uninteresting to me, many people were lined on the rocky coast along with news trucks and videographers. The parking lot at Waimea Bay Beach Park was close to chaos. People were scrambling for parking spots, although I couldn’t see why. With a couple of hours of watching waves, I followed highway 83 to Kalama Beach, where the wedding was to take place that evening.